OLD1SGT

I just started using a TomTom ONE 3rd Gen. and have a ? about the items that look like they should be house number on a given streen when moving around the map.

They look like they are tring to show what side of the street is odd and even numbered and what the high and low number are for that section of street. It also will show a number on the street when you move over it.

Is that what I'm seeing ??

If so then they are not correct for the town I live in. As a firefighter I was hoping we could use them, but now I'm starting to wonder.

If anyone can help clear this up for me that would be greate.

Max

I don't have a TomTom but I can say the primary gripe I have heard is their mapping is not the best for certain areas of the US

I can say that my Garmin is even off now and then (a wee little bit but not much) as far as house number. Then again the display you're speaking of sounds odd...my Garmin will place the actual (you are here) address in the corner of the screen. Sometimes its off by 1 or 2 (or on real rural roads it's a little funny too) but I am guessing as a firefighter - you'd be able to figure it out if you were close enough


Being part of a municipality though you might be able to get some special pricing from Motorola on their GPS stuff. But if this is for a volunteer dept. and the personal vehicles then the Moto stuff is a bit much

Max

..and sorry, I wasn't trying to be a jerky in regards to the TomTom issue you mentioned, I was just trying to let ya know that as far as individual house numbers - it's only whats provided by the mapping provider and sometimes that info isn't accurate. Even what google maps, etc. has is sometimes inaccurate as well. It's just unfortunate you can't usually tell that till you're there

OLD1SGT

Thanks for your feed back...

If you enter a house number as a go to locaton it looks like they are very close to being correct.

It just when you use the map function and move over a road that look like they are not correct. The odd / even are right. It's the house number that it shows and the high / low value for the the road. The direction that the numbers is correct. IE if you come in on an intersection do you turn left or right to go to a higher number. A wrong turn in the winter with a big truck can cost you a lot of time getting turned around on the back roads of NH.

Andy

House numbers have always been all over the place with GPS and online maps. My favorite restaurant's address is off by about 2 blocks. They've been in the same location and building for over 54 years. I don't think any person creates the database of addresses. It must be an average based on the ending/starting address for a given street length. The street I live on only has about 25 addresses. Yet every online map and GPS mapping software I've checked lists over 150 addresses for this street.

Some times I've had a GPS be spot on with an address. Most of the time they are within 1-2 blocks.

In NH, on the street signs at intersections, do they list addresses so you know which direction to turn based on an address? They do that out here in most residential areas.

Marc

I'm pretty sure that both map makers (Tele-Atlas and NavTeq) do not provide unique locations for every single address. Imagine how huge that data base would be. Instead they provide a location of a range of addresses and then the GPS interpolates, based on the the value of the address within that range. Hence, if the addresses aren't spread evenly across that range you get location errors as noted above. I think that if people complain about a particular address the makers my subdivide the ranges to improve things.

dav

Until a way can be found to standardize addresses across the entire US then you won't see a correct GPS.

Example: A street is originally designed for 1/2 acre lots, so each lot gets 1 address, right?

Well, when the rich developers talk the city planners into putting in high density housing on every other acre, you get 20 addresses, then 1, then 20 more... there is no way you can plot that and stay current.

The Postal Service is who set up the odd/even side of the streets thing, and most people follow it as a semi-official method of determining addresses. For bulk mailing you cannot qualify unless your mail is sorted by address.

The post office doesn't care if the addresses are correct, and long as they are sorted so a postman can walk down one side of the stree and deliver, then walk back up the other. All without resorting his load.

So it sounds like the Tom-Tom is using that database when just scanning an area. It knows the street and the valid address range for each side of the street.

As Marc said, this can be done with an amazingly small (and therefore quick) database. Looking up an actual address has to go against a much, much larger database that takes a long time (relatively). Your GPS screen could never display fast enough if it had to do that as you were scanning.

My last two jobs have used Per/Zip4 postal service addressing software. It is fun to do ad-hoc inquiries just to see what the database "knows". It is so wrong it is sad, and there is nothing you can do about it as a postal customer, because, wrong or right, if it does not match their database you do not get the rate you are seeking.

Lots more than you wanted to hear, huh?